Is Thomas Gilbert Jr. Competent to Stand Trial For His Father's Murder?

Thomas Gilbert, Jr. at a court appearance in 2015, following his arrest on charges of fatally shooting his father, hedge fund manager Thomas Gilbert, Sr.

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Thomas Gilbert Jr. awaits trial for his father's murder.

The Deerfield and Princeton grad has spent 2 1/2 Year in Rikers prison as lawyers debate his mental fitness.

A judge has ordered him to see psychiatrists or risk losing his right to an insanity defense.

At about 3:30 P.M. on Sunday January 4, 2015, Thomas Gilbert Jr. arrived unannounced at his parents’ eighth floor apartment on Beekman Place, and asked his mother to go out and buy him a sandwich. Four days earlier his father Thomas Sr., a long-respected figure on Wall Street and the founder of the Wainscott Capital Partners Fund, had quietly celebrated his 70th birthday.

But Thomas Sr.'s handsome 30-year-old son, a failed day trader whom he still supported, had not come to pay his respects. According to Manhattan homicide detectives, the troubled young man had a loaded .40 caliber Glock handgun and fatally shot his father in the head. He then placed the gun on his father’s chest and positioned his left hand around it in a staged suicide, before fleeing the apartment and barricading himself into his Chelsea apartment.

Minutes after the slaying, Shelley Gilbert discovered her husband’s body on the bedroom floor with a single bullet wound in his head and dialed 911. Later that night her only son was arrested, after police broke down the door of his apartment and discovered .40 caliber ammunition, a Glock gun box, handcuffs and a credit-card-skimming device with 21 blank credit cards.

The inexplicable patricide made lurid front page headlines for days, bewildering New York society in which the Gilbert family had long been fixtures. Soon it emerged that the young Gilbert, known to everyone as Tommy, was also being investigated by Southampton police in connection with the arson of the historic 17th century house in Sagaponack that belonged to Gilbert's estranged best friend, Peter Smith Jr., and that Smith had taken out a restraining order against Tommy.

Now, almost two-and-a-half-years later, Tommy remains in Rikers without a trial date, charged with murder and possessing a loaded firearm and a forgery device. Whether or not he murdered his father has never been at issue. But the question of his competency to stand trial is quite another matter.

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Thomas Gilbert, Jr. being walked into Central Booking at Manhattan Criminal Court following his arrest for his father’s murder.

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Blond, blue-eyed and six feet three inches tall, Tommy grew up in extreme privilege, attending Buckley and Deerfield Academy before following his father to Princeton, where he majored in economics. Tommy’s high profile criminal attorney Alex Spiro, who has a degree in psychiatry from Harvard, is pursuing a psychological defense. He claims his client is mentally unfit to stand trial.

To be legally competent a defendant must be able to understand the charges against him and courtroom procedure, and to participate effectively in his own defense, all of which Kirschner believed Tommy to be capable of. It is quite possible for someone suffering from serious mental health illness to still be declared fit for trial.

“Defendant’s appearance alone is remarkable in a criminal courtroom,” she wrote. “A graduate of the most exclusive schools on the East Coast, with a degree from Princeton University.”

In the 15 months since her decision, defense attorney Alex Spiro has repeatedly asked the judge to have Tommy undergo more psychological tests, insisting his client is delusional and refuses to cooperate with him.

But prosecutor Ortner objected. “I think a bit of perspective is in order,” he countered, “or we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of [competency] exams and possibly hearings.”

Last August, after a further round of psychiatric examinations, Tommy was again found fit to stand trial. But in order for him to be granted a psychological defense, Tommy must be tested by a prosecution expert. So far he has refused to submit to testing on two occasions, and now risks losing his insanity defense.

At the last hearing on April 18, 2017, Tommy was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, wearing light brown jail garb, his long, straggly hair way past his shoulders and sporting a bushy beard. His mother sat in the courtroom, as she has for almost every hearing.

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Spiro requested yet another competency test for his client, citing a sworn affidavit from another Rikers’ inmate that Tommy was refusing to be tested, as he believed the district attorney’s doctors were imposters.

Justice Jackson refused. She told Tommy that she was giving him one final opportunity to meet with the prosecution expert or he would forfeit his psychological defense and proceed to trial.

“I’m willing to give you another chance to do the interview,” Justice Jackson told him. “So I want you to think carefully. You’re a very intelligent man and you should be aware of the risks and consequences. So do you want me to give you another chance.”

Tommy nodded from the defense bench.

“So Mr. Gilbert is nodding an affirmation,” said Jackson. “For the record I’ve spoken to Mr. Gilbert and he says he understands the risks involved. This is going to be your final chance and then I’ll move the case along.”

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